It’s been (quite fittingly) about 9 months since we first sat down as a team and put tentative plans together for what a Birmingham Design Festival could be. In that time we’ve been working tirelessly – in our spare time – to put together a programme that, for the first year of a festival, has frankly surpassed all our high expectations.

We are delighted to share with you a comprehensive list of the designers and studios joining us for the festival in June. A who’s who of printmakers, illustrators, typesetters, animators, architects, UX aficionados, product designers, digital talents and good people changing the design industry from the top down and the bottom up – which we hope will be greeted with as much excitement by you as we’ve felt with every speaker confirmation. The generous responses of those invited to be involved in our first year has been truly mind blowing – and we’re so grateful to every single person who has committed to coming!

But we’re not done yet… Off the back of the recent announcements of our first fantastic five speakers (Anthony Burrill, Marina Willer, Jim Sutherland, Jack Renwick and Aaron Draplin) we felt it was time to give a better sense of the scale of our plans. What’s more, there’s yet more still to announce! So if you’re reading this thinking ‘there’s not enough Birmingham talent here’ rest assured it is coming. We will be carefully adding to this ridiculously talented list of national & international designers as we fine tune the programme, adding in our submission speakers (still open) especially those doing great works in our fair city.

We’ll follow up later this month with more detail on how the programme will unfold, but rest assured there’s going to be unmissable talks and events every day. Tickets will go on sale at the start of April, sign up for updates to keep in the loop (we’d hate for you to miss out!).